Casino Poker

I haven't played online poker in over week, mainly because I spent 6 nights in Oklahoma City covering Texas at the Women's College World Series. The team made the final four but couldn't muster enough offense to get any further.

While I was there I got my first casino poker experience. I played 3/6 limit HE at the Thunderbird in Norman, home casino to those redneck Sooners.

Sitting at the table for about two hours (after probably tw hours waiting) I only saw two showdowns, but both were monster pots for me, and I ended up +$53.

First hand, I had AA and raised. I only got a couple of callers, and the flop was a beautiful AKx. We checked the flop, and then got HU on the turn (a K) raising back and forth with the table idiot. Because it couldn't be capped HU I could have made a raise, but I finally just called to try to present weakness. I really thought that he had a K and that we would do some major betting on the river. The river was a rag, and he checked.
"I'll let him do my betting for me," he said.
I answered, "Well I'll bet then."
In retrospect, I wish I had pretended like his comment scared me, I think I could have gotten him to raise by acting scared about his confidence.
Anyway, he flat called with A6, and I took down a monster. A few orbits later, I had J8o in the BB. A player two seats down was stacking his chips to leave and carelessly looked at his cards. I saw them: AA.
He raised and got 3 callers, I called for the implied odds (I know this isn't so effective in limit).
The flop was J8x, and I was doing a river dance on the felt.
We capped the flop 3-way and the turn came down, an 8.
I check-raised this time, possibly a mistake. But it worked out fine, because the third player called mr AA's bet and then folded when AA stupidly raised my check-raise. I raised again and he called, then he flat called the river.
I showed, and he said "great hand," and mucked his cards. I felt a little sorry for the guy, losing a bunch on his last hand like that, but he paid for his carelessness.